


Unnameable Feelings

by WhatButAVillain



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 03:24:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatButAVillain/pseuds/WhatButAVillain
Summary: Aziraphale has been feeling some unnameable feelings when around his fellow angels and especially Crowley. Different but all too similar. What could they be.





	Unnameable Feelings

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for the Tadfield-Advertiser Good Omens Kink Meme. Specifically this one: https://tadfield-advertiser.dreamwidth.org/517.html?thread=236293 Hope you like it OP! It kind of got away from me.

Angels are supposed to be good. That’s their whole thing. They are beings of Light and Goodness in all its forms. They are Right in a way that humans and most especially demons are incapable of being. They are also in accord on most everything. They agree with each other in their Rightness. So when an angel asks ‘Why do you do that’ with such derision in their voice you know that you have done something Wrong. Aziraphale is an angel. He is Right but he is not in accord. When Gabriel asks ‘ _Why do you consume that_?’ while pointing at the sushi sitting on the counter Aziraphale feels a frisson of something. Something that he cannot even think to name.

The question is not a new one. The Archangels are always asking him Why. Why did you do this miracle? Why did you save that family? And Aziraphale stutters out one excuse after another. But none of those questions make him feel the way he does when Gabriel asks his wretched question. 

When Crowley offers to treat him to lunch, Aziraphale feels another frisson of an unnamed something down his spine. So different and so similar to what he felt when Gabriel asked his dreaded question. What do you want to eat? An innocent question but one that causes a shiver of delight up Aziraphale’s back. Crowley had always been like that. Not a why question but a what. What do you want to eat? What do you want to do? What do you want? Not Why do you want. 

Later, Gabriel will bring up the subject of food once again. This time the scorn in his words burns. _Lose the gut. Why do you consume that? Lose the gut. Why do you consume…_ Azirphale feels the heat of his words burn in his chest and spread up to his cheeks. He cannot name this heat that burns at the core of who he is. The implication is clear. You are not what we want you to be. You are not the soldier of Heaven any longer. You are...Soft. And that is not what you are meant to be.

Aziraphale knows he consumes too much food to be seemly for an angel who doesn’t need to eat in the first place. He loves the flavors that humans have come up with in their search for sustenance. Crowley eats as well but finishes his meals quickly, enjoying the act of eating but Aziraphale takes his time with each bite. Crowley expects nothing of Aziraphale but what he is. He brings him books and tea and feeds him sushi and cakes from bakeries and pushes his plate of dessert, that he ordered more for appearances sake than actual hunger, over the table and watches as Aziraphale consumes with a slow relish savoring each bite of sweet or savory. He watches in silence and asks ‘ _More?’_ in a voice that says ‘I will wait until you are done.’ And Aziraphale feels another heat in his chest. Just as unnameable as the one Gabriel brought about and it rises into his cheeks again but different. As different as night is to the day. Or an angel is to a demon. 

Aziraphale was already in distress before he noticed the three archangels accosting him in the street. The idea of running away with Crowley had its merits but it would be Wrong. Crowley was Wrong. He was a demon. And maybe if Aziraphale kept repeating it it would feel more true than it did at the moment. So his distress was raised when faced with three archangels that were clearly displeased and even more clearly, especially by their words, with him. Angels do not need to breathe. Aziraphale does not either but as it causes distress to the humans to notice he is not breathing, he does so. And has gotten in the habit over 6000 years of keeping air in his lungs. So when he has the breathe punched out of him by Sandalphon, he recognizes his own distress. The tightness of his chest and the burn as he tries to gather air back into empty lungs.

Crowley only stole his breathe once. In the Bastille. Aziraphale had been so pleased to see him that he had turned too abruptly and then noticed his entirely outdated clothing that spoke of being out of time and out of fashion. But seeing him nearly took his breath away. It was nowhere as distressing as when Sandalphon punched him and Uriel threw him up against the wall of the alleyway. But the tightness in his chest was there only the burn of abused lungs was missing.

Discorporation is unpleasant and has not actually occurred in 6000 years to Aziraphale but stepping into an unready transportation portal results in his first and hopefully last discorporation. His argument with the Quartermaster angel is new. They are not in accord. Aziraphale wants. He wants what the angels of Heaven say he should not want: to return to a soon-to-be-destroyed Earth and a demon. The anger is building in the quartermaster, Aziraphale can see it. He can almost feel it directed solely at him. _You pathetic excuse for an angel!_ And Aziraphale can almost feel the ice building in his incorporeal chest rising and crackling, clenching at his heart. And he names it. This feeling that feels like burning in Hellfire and drowning in Holy water. Shame. And he hears himself say something. Agreeing. In accord with his fellow angel for what may very well be the last time. _I suppose I am._ And it is agreeing with what has been unsaid in every question of why, in every disappointed interaction with Gabriel, with the other archangels, and now with this angel and the fellows standing in line behind him. _You pathetic excuse for an angel._ And Aziraphale doesn’t bother to look around at Heaven before reaching out to do a very unangelic thing. 

The pain in Crowley’s voice as he says his name is enough to stop Aziraphale’s heart, if he still had one. It speaks of unnamable loss. And the strangled _Angel_ brings a bucket of cold water dropping directly onto his incorporeal heart once more. And Oh...Oh this is affection. This is more than affection this is Love. This thrill in his spine and the heat in his chest and the cold of loss. It feels so much like the Shame he had with Heaven but here with Crowley and his What’s and his patience and the way he steals Aziraphale’s breath with his very existence. It is Right in a way Heaven has not been for so many years, if they ever were. Demons may not be Right but neither is Heaven right now. The only things Aziraphale is certain of is Crowley and Earth and this all too human feeling in his chest. 


End file.
